I have always admired Jeffrey Goldberg and Jonathan Chait for their generally thoughtful commentary on the Middle East and their refusal to follow in the footsteps of more knee-jerk pro-Israel commentators.
Until now.
On Friday and over the weekend, Goldberg and Chait responded to a Yediot Ahronoth story claiming to have unearthed evidence of Richard Goldstone's past as an apartheid-era judge, digesting it almost completely uncritically.
Goldberg wrote: "It turns out that this hero of the anti-Israel left...sentenced twenty-eight blacks to hang for criminal offenses." Meanwhile, Chait seized upon Yediot's "finding" that: "In another incident, Goldstone sentenced two young black men merely for being in possession of a video tape showing a speech given by one of the senior officials in Nelson Mandela's party." (The results of Yediot's "investigation" are not news in South Africa, where Goldstone's record is public and well-known.)
Goldberg's and Chait's ongoing blog posts on the latest Goldstone uproar betray what is at best a naively ahistorical approach to current events and at worst a willful blindness to Israel's own sordid history of supporting a white supremacist regime.
After all, Israel was the most significant arms supplier to that regime throughout the 1980s and served as a lifeline for the apartheid government during a period when Pretoria faced growing international condemnation and heightened domestic unrest (i.e. protests by 80 percent of the population demanding their democratic rights).
Anyone who served in the Israeli army during the late 1980s, as Goldberg did, should be well aware of this history.
During these years, military intelligence officials from the two countries held annual intelligence-sharing conferences and South African military representatives came to the West Bank to view the anti-riot equipment the Israeli army was using against Palestinians. When foreign journalists in the West Bank encountered visiting South African military officials, the Israeli military censor was quickly ordered to hush it up. Back in South Africa, a large contingent of Israeli rocketry experts was holed up in the seaside town of Arniston helping the South African government put the finishing touches on ballistic missiles intended to carry its next generation of nuclear weapons.
Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, who denounced Goldstone as "a man of double standards," because he "sentenced black people to death" appears to have some double standards of his own. Rivlin was no doubt fully informed of Israel's military alliance with South Africa during the 1980s, given that he served on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the 12th Knesset from 1988-1992--a position that gave him nearly unfettered access to sensitive military documents and high-level discussions of Israel's defense doctrine. These were the peak years of arms sales to South Africa, exceeding $1.5 billion in 1988 and approximately $800 million in 1989.
In their zeal to demonize Goldstone, Chait and Goldberg miss the point that it is possible to condemn the Goldstone Report without promoting a hypocritical campaign of character assassination. To his credit, Ron Kampeas of the Capital J Blog immediately denounced this smear strategy. He noted that self-righteous Israeli propaganda replete with Nazi comparisons "exposes you to ridicule," especially given that "Israel sold arms to, traded with, in some instances allied with Apartheid South Africa," a point that does not seem to have occurred to Chait and Goldberg. Kampeas continued, "At the time, when pressed on the matter, Israeli diplomats always boiled it down to 'we take whatever friends we can get.' (And I don't remember budding diplomat Danny Ayalon sticking his neck out to say any different.)"
There are many legitimate grounds on which to criticize the Goldstone Report, but Goldstone's past is not one of them. Rather than examining the historical record, Goldberg and Chait relied exclusively on the Yediot article in passing judgment on Goldstone's early career. Their posts, and a more recent one by Ron Radosh, fail to acknowledge Goldstone's crucial role in facilitating South Africa's transition to democracy by chairing the investigative Commission on Public Violence and Intimidation from 1991-1994. Among other things, this commission exposed the apartheid government's links to a so-called Third Force--made up of government security and ex-security operatives seeking to derail peaceful democratic elections.
The Goldstone Commission's revelations outraged Nelson Mandela, leading him to conclude that F.W. de Klerk's government had organized covert death squads. (For more on this topic, read the dispatches of British journalist John Carlin, the author of the book that became the movie Invictus.) Goldstone's work earned him Mandela's respect and, in 1994, South Africa's first black president appointed Goldstone to the Constitutional Court--hardly the sort of honor the great moral icon of the 20th century would have bestowed on "a man without a moral compass," as Goldberg calls him.
Consider for a moment an imperfect but telling analogy: imagine a Chilean judge who dutifully served the Pinochet regime during the mid-1970s and then continued to sit on the bench after the country's democratic transition in 1990. After chairing commissions investigating Pinochet-era crimes, our hypothetical judge then began working for the UN and in 2004 was appointed to investigate civilian casualties during the U.S. invasion of Iraq, where he accused Americans of perpetrating war crimes. If Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney had sought to discredit the Chilean judge on the grounds that he served "Pinochet's brutal and unjust military dictatorship," every serious journalist in Washington would have simply laughed. Such sanctimony coming from the government that provided support and sustenance to Pinochet would have been dismissed as a cheap smear.
Unfortunately, Goldstone's critics are not above hypocrisy. In fact, Israeli government officials and journalists used to offer South Africans lessons on the subject.
In October 1985, as it happens, the editor of Yediot Ahronoth's weekend magazine, Aharon Shamir, came to South Africa to meet with a mid-level Foreign Ministry functionary. When the bureaucrat complained that South Africa was being denounced everywhere as undemocratic but could not risk giving blacks the vote, Shamir advised: "Give the blacks the vote very slowly. See how it works. Bit by bit. If you see that your bit by bit approach is not working, change it. But make the world believe you are sincere. You have to be hypocritical to survive."
Indeed.
Sasha Polakow-Suransky is a Senior Editor at Foreign Affairs. His book, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, will be published by Pantheon on May 25. Pre-order it here.
And on what universe is an "expose" public record information that's already common knowledge to an entire country's citizens and government? Lazy journalism run amok.
Bibi has said no to a settlement freeze, no to sharing Jerusalem, no to the 1967 borders, no to the rights of Palestinian refugees.
Bibi,again, is trying to dictate terms and preempt their outcome. The only remaining obstacle to negotiations are the conditions he continues to impose.
In 2003 the Arab League made an offer to Israel. If they returned to the 1967 borders all the Arab countries would sign a peace treaty with Israel. Israel ignored the offer.
In 2003 the U.S. formulated the road map for the establishment of a Palestinian state, according to which Israel was required to cease all construction in the settlements, including ‘natural growth,’ and evacuate all of the outposts established under Sharon (since March 2001). Israel refused.
It is a matter of record that Mahmoud Abbas participated in 18 years of direct negotiations with seven Israeli governments; all without a settlement freeze.
In which time the settlements and their associated infrastructure grew exponentially. What do you suggest, that Abbas sit down for another 18 years of negotiation while Israel continues it's apartheid rampage? That Israel, again, use negotiations as a cover for settlement activities?
He, and the world, has wised up to the problems of his previous approach. More power to him.
If you want peace, you don’t build illegal settlement colonies in the Palestinian capital or on Palestinian land.
Funny isn't it, how in their zeal to slime Richard Goldstone, Israel's groupies are engaging in Holocaust revisionism.
Back to school for you.
Question: Do you think the fact that a judge handed down death sentences (or upheld the ones handed out by other judges) discredits any investigation the judge might carry out?
If the answer is "YES" then the investigations into the war crimes that happened in World War 2 are also discredited. Why? Because the chief American prosecutor, Justice Robert Jackson, upheld nineteen death sentences as a Supreme Court justice -eight as a sitting judge.
Therefore, if Goldstone's conduct as a judge makes his investigation invalid, the so does Jackson's. If the Israeli government is innocent on these grounds, the so were the governments prosecuted at Nuremberg (and later, Tokyo).
What if Goldstone were an Anglos -- what would "they" say then ?
I am one, and find what you have said here offensive.
The zionists are their own worst enemy and the people they send here or that show up, don't do any good service to Israel. I prefer to let them do the barking and frothing at the mouth.
Am I right or am I right!?!?!?
http://www.themiamihurricane.com/2009/01/21/alan-dershowitz-makes-case-for-israel-at-law-school/
"Dershowitz also condemned former president Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu – who he called a “bigot and anti-Semite” – and the United Nations, which he accused of 'holding Israel to a higher standard.'"
GET OFF THE DOLE AND YOU CAN DO WHAT YOU WANT!
That israel is always screaming how independent they are blah blah blah, I understand so why don't they stop collection aid? For a country whose whol eexistence is based on being self-sufficent in Jews need a place to go, this dependency on Gentiles (USA) make sno sense to me? Am I missing something here. It would seem better for Israel also.
The "Pro-Israel Crowd" you say?
One might have thought so given the headline, but it disucsses only two columnists in one newspaper.
Is that really the "Pro-Israel Crowd"?
Someone seems to have aimed a bit high with this headline, and as a result has missed the mark.
Folks, just want to let you all know that I did not put italianwine up to posting this comment just to prove my point.
In the same way then, you've no problem being lumped in with everyone supporting the Palestinians? Really?
You are using outdated and inaccurate trade data. I welcome debate and criticism of the article and the book, but please get your numbers straight before intervening. The numbers you cite are the same figures (excluding arms) that were cited by those seeking to deny the Israel-SA relationship in the 1980s. Newer, more accurate figures are available and cited in the book. Exports to SA in 1986 based on declassified South African arms acquisition data were approximately twice the figure you cite above. Using comprehensive trade data, you will see that South Africa was actually Israel's 2nd or 3rd largest trading partner after the US (on par with the UK and Germany)
They come from a very thorough and fully documented US study.
South Africa: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1996.
http://countrystudies.us/south-africa/
Quite a whopper of a secret relationship.
Goldstone has done things that are good, I won't deny that. But he has also done things very condemnable, and this would appear to be one of them. Deflecting and jumping around it isn't going to change the facts.
It's more along the lines of-- you both have evil pasts, but only one individual (Goldstone) has made a strong attempt to change for the better (which he succeeded, and which the world-over recognized).
Question is, when will Israel and her supporters change their old ways of segregation, oppression and racism and try to better themselves in the future? Surely, continuing with the expulsions and house demolitions in East Jerusalem is not one way... http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/u-s-warns-israel-palestinians-of-taking-inflammatory-actions-in-jerusalem-1.289935
2) Suransky did not say that Goldstone has changed at all. You are putting words in his mouth.
3) Palestinians are not a race. Therefore your accusations of "segregation" and "racism" does not apply to the complex political situation in the Middle East.
Did you ever get around to reading it
They got over 200 nukes; if they want to defend themselves, let them do it, but we dont neeed to help
People say that Israel is our only real friend in the region....I say to them: I dont remember us having any enemies there before Israel was founded....
History is not your strong point is it?
America's first foreign war was against Islamic piracy and terror.
So, who wants to brake the bad news to the author, that Israelis (be they from the middle east or europe) and Palestinians are both Caucasians, so whatever form of prejudice might exist between the two groups, it certainly not racism. And Israeli certainly isn't a white supremacist regime my any stretch of the imagination. Poles, like the author, have a long history of prejudice against Jews, though.
I always thought they were both Semitic..
And by the way, NOBODY said Israelis are WHITE OR CAUCASIAN!!
What the author is saying is that Israel [the country] was supporting the WHITE SUPREMACIST REGIME in another country [South Africa]
My God! What is it with some of these people???
Is their urge to go on the offensive so big they can't even distinguish a country from a race?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race
Semitic is a language group, not a race or even a sub-race, as silly as all those distinctions are.